Angst

Great camerawork and an unsettling sense of dread are the two main reasons to recommend Angst. It's an ugly and uncomfortable film, but one made with lots of skill. It's emotionally cold and a depressing experience, but an unforgettable one nevertheless. You might want to save it for when you're in the right mood, because it's bound to disturb the rest of your day.

Word on the street is this is a super intense, gruelling, claustrophobic serial killer film. They're not lying. But it's important to get to note why, especially in this case: why this type of violence enthralls so much? And I mean apart from any particular on-screen nastiness. More virulent films have been made, much nastier. Why this fascinates is a completely different beast than say, something like Hostel.

It's the easiest thing to make us cringe and shy away, but to fervently want to keep watching?

The popular opinion is this works so well exactly because of how contained and straight-forward. There are no distractions from the concentrated moment we first encounter: a inmate giving himself a shave on his day of parole. There are no allusions to anything else but private madness and nothing to escape to for comfort or respite, except perhaps sheer exhaustion. This man is going to go on a crime spree again as soon as he's out of prison, we can tell this much. We can tell it's going to unravel the way we secretly hope it does.

Well, this is fine and makes some sense. But doesn't adequately explain to my mind. No, why this works so viscerally - and ties in with other interests of mine in film - I believe has all to do with the cinematic eye.

Now most films operate on the assumption that you want to experience a world as real as possible. Every advance in cinematic technology - sound, color, the recent fad of 3D - is a step in that direction. We want to escape more vividly and more urgently than ever. And what most films do to abet that escape is to let loose a few threads of story and place, hopefully open enough if we are in caring hands, that we can be trusted to attach ourselves from own experience. The tighter the weave of the threads from that point on, the closer we are lassoed to the cinematic world. Editing and camera are assigned invisible ways; they have to work without us getting to notice.

The Soviets changed all that very early in the game. Here a very world was assembled by the eye. There was no story, it was all a matter of calligraphic (dynamic overlapping) watching. Welles, and less famously Sternberg before him, unpacked these notions by letting it fall on the eye of the camera to join fragments together.

(this particular eye was first conceived by the Buddhist but that's another story altogether).

Now this is rumored to be the DP's project working under an alias, a Polish man who knows the camera. The opening shot exhibits masterful knowledge of Welles; a crane shot that establishes location by joining together many different planes of perspective. It would have been a film to watch with just this mode, that others like Argento and DePalma exercised in adventurous flourishes of spatial exploration.

It's actually a little more elaborate than that. We have two eyes instead of the one. The first is the killer's eye, tightly screwed and always at eye-level as he prowls around. Interior monologue plays out in voice-over, itself taken from the diaries of an actual killer, and meant to recast everything as internal space: victims are an invalid, an old woman and her daughter, each one mapping to a person that deeply wounded in the past as we find out. So we have exceedingly tormented soul spilled out and contorting physical space, very much like Zulawski practiced. Another Pole, another piece of the puzzle.

The second eye you will notice is always mounted on a crane and pulled upwards in steep ascends. A bird's eye far removed from human madness, which is the Buddhist eye of woodblock prints. To the film's credit, and this is a lot of its power for me, it remains abstract enough that we may use this perspective as we are inclined: is it a godless and uncaring or a merciful eye, pulling us from the carnage or skipping to the next?

This relatively obscure German film is very well-done. It's about a schizophrenic man who murders uncontrollably. The film features very innovative camera work (at the time) which includes a recurring POV shot that will impress, no doubt. What makes this film tough to watch is the very realistic murder scenes, which include a graphic rape/murder and the long, drawn-out drowning death of an invalid. It reaches levels of intensity seen in other great psycho films like Seul Contre Tous and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The lead actor is very convincing, and makes you feel sorry for him as well as loathe him. A highly recommended film.

An unnerving insight into the demented mind of a pure psychopath, Angst is one of the most disturbing films of its kind. A brutal, disquieting & uncompromising portrait of a serial killer that's also notable for its unconventional camerawork, this Austrian chiller is thrilling, captivating & thoroughly unsettling from the first frame to the last.

Crafted in the same vein as Henry except but way more intense & unrestrained in its execution, supplying a heavy dose of gruesome violence, and powerful enough to affect even the most hardcore fans of the genre, this obscure, perverse & sadistic masterpiece is deserving of a broader viewership and is one of the best psycho-killer films you will ever see. A hidden gem of world cinema, Angst comes strongly recommended.

I have always been a fan of the genre of serial killer movies. Not to get confused with slasher flicks because the serial killer movies are usually sophisticated with a realistic feel to them, causing an unnerving and disturbing feel. Not to take away from the slasher because there is fun in those movies. Angst is the best of the serial killer movies, in my personal opinion. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is marvelous and Amoklauf is also a great film, but as far as putting you right in the serial killers mind, this movie does the best and it is very frightening.

The story starts with the lead character (basically the only lead character) walking up to a house. He knocks on the door and when the door opens he murders the person who answers with a hand gun. After being in jail for 10 years he is released. Upon his release he instantly gets started again murdering a mother and her grown children. One of which a retarded man in a wheelchair.

The storyline may seem simple but in no means is the character simple. After he murders the person at the beginning of the movie we are shown events in documentary form leading up to the murder and him going into jail. So we become familiar with the character. But being familiar with the character and suddenly being put in the characters shoes are two different things.

The whole movie when he is released from jail is narrated by the killer, almost like he is thinking and we can hear his thoughts. When he goes into a restaurant and sits down at the table he starts getting uncomfortable after watching two young woman sitting at the bar. He starts thinking of sick things to do to them and as a result gets the feeling that everyone in the restaurant is watching him. So right away we, as the audience, get this uncomfortable feeling as well and we are also introduced to how paranoid the character is. Much of the movie is like this.

The moments in which he is murdering the family is almost unbearable and rather disturbing. I don't want to give to much away but be prepared to be disturbed. It's not the violent nature in which he kills these people it's almost the inevitable lead up to it.

Well, I hope this review helps. This is a very difficult film to find so good luck in the search. Sources from IMDb tell me that this will be released in the states eventually. If you find it before then... enjoy. 10/10